Sister

[email protected]

Dearest T, How convenient for him. I imagine she’s also

fortysomething, and because nature’s far crueler to women than men,

what other choice is she left with? Not happy.

lol Bee

P.S. Why are you using Coreyshand as a typeface for e-mails? It’s not easy to read.From: [email protected] To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

Dearest Bee,

You walk down your straight-and-narrow moral tightrope, not even teetering, while I fall off at the first small wobble. But I do believe him. There’s no reason why anyone should get hurt.

T XXXX

PS I thought it was a friendly kind of typeface.

PPS Did you know lol means laughing out loud?From: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone To: [email protected]

Dear Tess, You’re surely not that naive? Wise up.

Lol Bee

(From me it means lots of love)From: [email protected] To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

“Wise up”? You’ll be telling me next to seek closure. You need to leave the states and come home. Have a nice day, hon,

T. X

I had imagined a fortysomething woman whose looks had unfairly faded while her husband’s had not. I had imagined parity at twenty-five but a marriage of unequals fifteen years later. But the woman in the hall was no more than thirty. She has unnervingly pale-blue eyes.

“Emilio? What’s going on?”

Her voice was cut-glass aristocratic—the house must be hers. I didn’t look at her, directing my question at Emilio. “Where were you last Thursday, the twenty-third of January, the day my sister was murdered?”

Emilio turned to his wife. “One of my students, Tess Hemming. She was on the local news last night, remember?”

Where was I when the news was on? Still in the morgue with you? Putting Mum to bed? Emilio put his arm around his wife, his voice measured. “This is Tess’s older sister. She’s going through a terribly traumatic time and is … lashing out.” He was explaining me away. Explaining you away.

“For God’s sake, Tess was your lover. And you know me because I interrupted you getting your paintings out of her flat last night.”

His wife stared at him, her face suddenly looked fragile. He tightened his arm around her.

“Tess had a crush on me. That’s all. It was just a fantasy. The fantasy got out of control. I wanted to make sure there was nothing in her flat that she’d fabricated about me.”

I knew what you wanted me to say. “Was the baby a fantasy too?”

His arm was still around his wife, who was still and mute. “There is no baby.”

I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for this next bit too.

“Mummy?”

A little girl was coming down the stairs. His wife took the child’s hand. “Bedtime, sweetie.”

I asked you once if he had children, and you sounded astonished I’d even asked the question. “Of course he doesn’t, Bee.” It was an “Of course he doesn’t because if he did I wouldn’t be having sex with him, what do you take me for?” Your moral tightrope might be a lot wider than mine, but that’s your boundary and you wouldn’t have crossed it. Not after Dad. So that was what he’d been trying to hide at home.

Emilio slammed the door shut in my face—this time my strength was no match for his. I heard him pulling the chain across. “Leave me and my family alone.” I was left on the doorstep shouting through the door. Somehow I’d become the obsessed madwoman on the doorstep, while he was part of a persecuted little family besieged in their beautiful period home. I know, the previous day I had used lines from a TV cop show, now I was going Hollywood. But real life, at least my real life, hadn’t given me any kind of model for what was happening.

I waited in their front garden. It grew dark and icily cold. In this stranger’s snowy garden, with nothing familiar around me, I had Christmas carols playing silently in my head. You always liked the jolly ones: “Ding Dong! Merrily on High,” “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” singing about parties and presents and having a good time. I’ve always gone for the quiet, reflective ones: “Silent Night,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” This time it wasIn the bleak midwinter,Frosty wind made moan,Earth stood hard as iron,Water like a stone.

I’d never realized that it was also a song for the bereaved.

Emilio’s wife came out of the house, interrupting my silent solo. A security light switched on illuminating her path toward me. I imagined she was coming to appease the madwoman in the garden before I started boiling up the bunnies.

“We weren’t introduced earlier. I’m Cynthia.”

Maybe sangfroid is in the genes of the aristocracy. I found myself responding to this strange formal politeness, holding out my hand to take hers. “Beatrice Hemming.”

She squeezed my hand, rather than shook it. Her politeness was something warmer. “I’m so sorry about your sister. I have a younger sister too.” Her sympathy seemed genuine. “Last night,” she continued, “just after the news, he said he’d left his laptop at the college. It’s an expensive one, important for his work, and he’s a convincing liar. But I’d seen it in his study before dinner. I thought he was going off for sex.” She was talking quickly, as if she needed to get this over and done with. “I’d known about it, you see, just hadn’t confronted him with it. And I’d thought it had stopped. Months ago. But it serves me right. I know that. I did the same to his first wife. I’d never properly realized before what she must have gone through.”

I didn’t reply, but found myself warming to her in this most unlikely of situations. The security light from the house flipped off, and we were in almost darkness together. It felt strangely intimate.

“What happened to their baby?” she asked. I’d never thought of him as anything other than your baby before. “He died,” I said, and in the darkness I thought her eyes had tears in them. I wondered if they were for your baby or for her failed marriage.

“How old was he?” she asked.

“He died while he was being born, so I don’t think he gets an age.”

It adds to the stillness in stillborn. I saw her hand move unconsciously to her tummy. I hadn’t noticed until then